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It may have been any time between the earliest hours of the evening to the brink of dawn for all Jaekyung could tell. He had been tossing and turning for what felt like a lifetime. He wasn’t sure if he had even slept at all; his fever-induced delirium had permitted all the time passed to blur into one meandering stream dispersing in the back of his mind.
As he flipped his intolerably warm pillow over for presumably the hundredth time that night, from the front door came a light rap of knuckles in a rhythm of three, making him warily crack his tired eyes half-open. He gave a redundant once-over of the room, untrusting of his hindered senses, until he heard an airy voice with the same gentle cadence, “Mr. Joo? Are you awake?”.
He didn’t care enough in the moment to muster up a logical conclusion for nobody but himself as to why his shoulders instantly relaxed and a tranquil sigh was released at the mere acknowledgment of the doctor’s presence, but he managed to croak out a weak “It’s open,” albeit gruffer than he was expecting; it was the first time he’d spoken in hours aside from the occasional frustrated expletives in response to the sleeplessness.
A few seconds after he heard the clicks of the door opening and closing, the sound of sauntering sock-clad feet entered the room, and he let bashful honey eyes meet his own.
Dan was wearing his typical white t-shirt and faded blue jeans, and judging by his slightly dampened hair, had taken a quick shower after finishing his shift. He held a large thermos flask with both hands, but set to place it on the nearest surface after catching a glimpse of the sheen of sweat coating Jaekyung’s pallid face.
He hurried over to the bed and leaned over the fighter to place the back of his hand against his forehead, then his cheek. Jaekyung’s felt like his skin was scorching like a wildfire was burning rampant through his veins, so he couldn’t help but instinctively lean into the cool, delicate touches, that’s all it had to be: natural, mechanical, physiological.
“My goodness. Sir, you didn’t tell me it was this bad,” Dan said in a half-whisper, almost uncharacteristically scoldingly. His soft features wore a combination of worry, perplexity, and something nearly resembling personal offence reflected through an unfaltering glare beneath slightly furrowed eyebrows. And Jaekyung only responded with his own bout of indignity.
“Yeah, it’s nothing but a cold. I don’t need you caring for me when you can hardly look after yourself,” He replied nasally. And with no dispute, Dan gave another faintly upset look right through him and left the room.
Jaekyung closed his eyes again the second Kim Dan left his field of vision, like there was no point in seeing if he couldn’t look at him. He could hear clattering in the kitchen, and then a beat later, rattling in the bathroom.
Dan returned holding a bowl of liquid in one hand, sloshing quietly with each step, and a couple of washcloths in the other. He placed the bowl on the younger’s nightstand and proceeded to sit on the edge of the bed, though only the margin of his rear made contact with the mattress, as if any more pressure would make the bed frame collapse in on itself.
While Jaekyung internally scoffed at his pathetic attempt at maintaining “professional” distance, Dan wrung the rag he’d dipped in the cool water out, and began dabbing it on Jaekyung’s forehead.
“What did I just say,” Jaekyung muttered with not nearly as much irritation and reluctance as he’d wanted to express.
“I need to bring your fever down,” Dan monotonously replied, and Jaekyung couldn’t bother with arguing anymore.
He would rather endure this sweltering pain for weeks on end than admit it out loud, but this moment was nearing the top of the list of the few instances he’d felt this much relief in his life.
Sure, the aching heat radiating from his core being alleviated was beyond pleasant, but the prospect of being checked up on in the middle of the night, being cared enough for to be fed and wiped clean by somebody he’s treated like a doormat since the day they met? The unfamiliar notion created a repulsive flutter in his otherwise untouched heart.
Dan continued pressing the compress along the column of the neck as they listened to each other’s beautiful quietude: Dan’s gentle, steady breathing, Jaekyung’s sighs and subtle grunts of ease.
After a moment, Dan’s movements slowed slightly and grew with hesitation.
He mumbled timidly, “Um… Sir, would you mind taking your shirt off? I just need to ge–“
Jaekyung interrupted by obliging abruptly, hoisting himself to sit up just enough to peel the sweat-soaked shirt off of his blazing torso.
As much as he loved to see Dan’s cheeks glow a crimson red at the hint of anything suggestive, and watch him sheepishly stumble over his words when the fighter made a lewd pass at him or tried to cop a feel of him through his scrubs, he didn’t like the idea of dissatisfying him with immaturity any further.
Dan averted his gaze from the chiselled body as he wrung out another towel.
The moonlight peering through the window cast shadows of his eyelashes on his face - intricate stalactites spread across his cheekbones.
It illuminated his tender profile too, allowing Jaekyung to notice his elusive self-neglect: his already-pale complexion pastier than usual, the faint sunken indents on his cheeks above the sharper protrusions of his jaw, and the dusky circles under his pretty eyes.
But Jaekyung tried fruitlessly to tuck away his worry irritation as Dan switched his focus to applying the cloth to the larger blood vessels around his underarms and groin.
Though he had an unceasing libido when it came to the brunette, he bit his lip and bore his eyes into the patterns on the ceiling so as to not let his mind wander when Dan pulled the sheets a little further down to pat right above his crotch with the damp cloth.
A couple more spells passed as Dan continued to apply the chill fabric on his body, and when he was done, he went to stand up and leave the athlete with his eyes clamped shut to rest, until a large, insistent hand wrapped around his slender wrist.
“Don’t. I can’t sleep,” Jaekyung groaned.
Dan’s eyes widened, “S-Sir, I really don’t think you’re in any state to be havi–“ he started in an alarmed manner, only to be cut off again with a snigger.
“God, get your mind outta the gutter, Kim Dan; that’s not what I meant,” he spoke with a smirk that Dan wasn’t aware he missed. “There’s no cable in here, so… Just talk until I fall asleep.”
Talk…? “Talk about what, Sir?”
“It’s not a hard task, just talk about anything, like what you did today or some shit; I don’t like the silence in here,” Jaekyung replied before thinking about how he had never met anybody so challenging towards him before.
“Oh, well, I spoke with your old director today,” Jaekyung peeped his eyes open at that with an unreadable expression on his face, anticipatory nonetheless.
Dan remembered in that moment everything the old man had told him: how his mother abandoned him, how he had been starved and beat since he was a child, his peers bullying him, his father’s overdose; he never would have imagined the arrogant, lavish athlete to have suffered so much.
He noticed Jaekyung staring at him, waiting for him to finish, but he didn’t think it was appropriate to debrief all of his traumas while he was already in such an unwell condition, “He just showed me a picture he had of you at a youth boxing league. He said you were ruthless and stubborn, that’s all.”
Jaekyung could see clear as day that he knew more than he was letting on, but he felt too weak to demand any answers, and so he stared at him incredulously, knowing Dan would have to disclose it at one point or another.
An awkward beat of silence.
“Uh, I think I’ll go for a walk along the pier with Granny tomorrow too, I haven’t been getting to spend as much time as I’d like to with her lately,” he began again, desperate to change the topic.
After some time of quiet, mundane rambling, the rise and fall of Jaekyung’s chest had steadied out, and the muscles of his ravishing face had relaxed; his full lips were ever so slightly parted, and the crease often living between his eyebrows had smoothened over. It was a rare sight for Kim Dan to see, making it all the more confusingly warming to the centre of his chest.
—
Jaekyung stirred awake early the next morning, he could already feel that his temperature had dropped significantly and he could breathe through his nose with minimal disruption.
It might have been one of the best nights of sleep he’d had in months.
Although it did take him another second to feel the extra weight next to him on the bed; the amber sunlight was spilling in through the windows and catching onto the doctor’s sleeping form, turning brunette locks into threads of fiery auburn. His spindly legs had found their way home on top of the fighter’s in his slumber.
It took him another minute to feel that the towel draped around the back of his neck was freshly placed: still cool and damp.
While Dan began to also show signs of life and awaken from his short-lived rest, Jaekyung gazed in interest, wondering what he was going to do with this beautiful trouble.